Allyson Drucker, a correspondent for the Art History Newsletter, has reviewed two Thursday sessions: “Renaissance and/or Early Modern: Naming and/or Knowing the Past” and “Eighteenth-Century Art, Decorative Arts, and Architecture: Shattering the Nineteenth-Century Image of the Eighteenth Century.” I look forward to reading a few more posts from the art-history website, run by Jonathan Lackman of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, who has covered the past few CAA conferences.
The CAA annual conference has been enormously successful for many years, and this year is no exception. It brings a vast number of artists and art historians together, and clearly there is enormous value to be derived from that — the networking and employment opportunities, and the serendipitous meeting with new and old colleagues.
However, for the most part, the core of the conference – the Program Sessions — follow a model that has remained virtually unchanged since the nineteenth century. Papers are prepared in advance, read, and if the session is well structured, there might be an active question and answer period afterward, perhaps with a discussant leading the way. It seems that for most sessions, the vast majority of time is taken up with the reading of carefully prepared papers with significantly less time allotted to either a discussant or active Q&A. (more…)
Since shameless self-promotion seems to be a prerequisite of participating in CAA, I figured I’d join in the fun.
(though, I wouldn’t be pushing it if it weren’t going to be great!!) :) (more…)
Encouraged by the warm climate and the postmodern architecture in Los Angeles, conference organizers have recently decided that the 2010 CAA annual conference will be in Dubai, and they’re are already hard at work at next year’s sessions. Here are some samples of panels that have already been accepted:
The Merleau-Ponty effect in high modernism: Greenberg and Fried’s secret love affair with phenomenology in the underground café culture of 1950s Manhattan. (or, “Was that really Clement Greenberg in that photo of a Happening at the Franklin Furnace?”)
A Paradigmatic Paradigm shift; from Diderot to Baudrillard and back again in seconds on Second Life (this panel will be presented as a webcast only, streaming live from the book fair)
Hands off my object fetish: touching the curve, stroking the brush, and redefining the tactile in the realm of supraphysicality.
Dismantling Discursivity in the 21st Century: Sanctioning the myopia of an iconographic taxonomy of signs and analogons (signalagons) in pictorial representation.
Impacted Colon: The Role of Paper Titles in Signaling Political Affiliation, Disciplinary Adherence, and Career Aspiration.
Untouching Site/Sight: privileging smell, dissembling the somatic, and recannonizing the metasenses.
This panel got all riled up and that is a good thing, barbs were traded and the audience was often willing to go for the throat. I wish the audience at CAA would do this more often. It is a crime that we can sit through often confusing, jargon laden presentations only to abscond for coffee. At one point in the L.A. panel, Shana Nys Dambrot just threw it out there — Hockney is phoning it in, he is a bad painter, she never got it. I don’t agree and neither did Betty Ann Brown of Cal Sate Northridge, but it was refreshing to see Shana launch it. I admired the candor of this panel, I loved that Peter Frank said, “The worst thing a critic can do is ignore a show.” It’s true. It’s good to hear things that are true. (more…)
The Society of Contemporary Art Historians, a new CAA affiliated society founded this year under the leadership of a DC-based trio of younger scholars, packed the house for a lively set of position papers. Topic A: “What is Contemporary Art History?” chaired by Suzanne Hudson and Alexander Dumbadze. (more…)
Wow. It was standing-room-only at the panel “Land Use in Contemporary Art”, organized by University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s Kirsten Swenson - and there appeared to be so little standing room available that people in the back kept leaning on the light switch, cutting the room’s illumination. An apt metaphor for some of the panelists’ explorations of place, unassimilability, discomfort, delay, and technological takeover. Also beautifully poetic was the fact that at least two panelists mentioned sites and projects in rural Nevada - a state whose infrastructure is taking an apocalyptic nosedive. “Everyone in Las Vegas is losing their shirts right now,” an insider confided right before the panel began. To quote fellow Nevadan Dave Hickey, “Quelle fuckin’ surprise.” (more…)
I admit I’ve wandered from the path this morning. While usually keeping to Contemporary Art like the silly person I am, I chose instead to attend a talk by Samuel Edgerton on Renaissance Perspective. The best talk I’ve been to so far, it laid out the history of perspective as born of theological and medieval concerns and rooted in a sort of divine rather than secular geometry. Galileo’s studies in art, interpretations by Alberti of Brunelleschi’s religious impulses, aided his science and enabled his great intuitive leaps. The implication of the talk was to give us a full view of the Rennaissance and to break down some false markers between the medieval divine and more secular advances in society. This was an amazing talk, the kind of thing that makes wandering around this building in a morning haze a wonderous thing.
IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH. THIS JUST IN:
Mary Kelly has been abducted by a rebel faction of Greenbergian formalists, and is currently MIA. An unmarked black sedan intercepted her while on her way to her office at UCLA, just after being dropped off by her husband early this morning, witnesses say. “Yes, I’m sure it was her…I saw the hair” one student said, still in shock after hearing that her Lacan seminar had been cancelled for the day. Previous reports suspected that conference proceedings may be interrupted by such traditionalists, but authorities had expected the disruption to occur at the Convention Center. The incident at the Broad Center has artists and art historians alike in a tizzy.
But, in all seriousness folks, the Mary Kelly lecture scheduled for tonight HAS BEEN CANCELLED. The Hammer will have a lovely open house instead. Stay tuned for further details.
If you spot a black car that fits the description above, and has the license plate SFFRJET, please notify the authorities immediately.
I’m in bed with my laptop and a glass of water, currently experiencing a poverty of riches.
Here’s what I’d like to see this morning:
The Networked Nineteenth Century
Water Is Power: African Art History
Baroque Anatomy: Motives and Methods
The Americanization of Neoclassicism in Latin America
Photography and Architecture: Shaping a New Dialogue
Land Use in Contemporary Art
